


ARKYTIOR

by Suzi



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Father-Daughter Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-16 02:06:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16076078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suzi/pseuds/Suzi
Summary: Susan Williams is a normal girl. She has normal friends and a normal life. One day she comes home and finds out that Amy and Rory are not her parents at all. But if they are not her parents, then who is?





	1. Prologue

_I never really wanted to let her go. When she looks at m_ _e I get this uncomfortable - yet_ _lovely feeling. And when she laughs_ _,_ _my eyes get watery and I curse_ _myself_ _insid_ _e my head, wishing I didn´t had_ _to leave her._ _But my adventures are dangerous._ _I have always known that_ _, and I´ve los_ _t companions_ _waaay_ _past too many_ _._

_I try to stop, but it is lik_ _e the universe refuses me to leave_ _m_ _y crazy occupation on the shelf and I_ _keep sailing through the stars. I can´t take her with me. It hurts_ _so much_ _. But I keep telling myself what I always tell myself when_ _stuff like this happens: There is no other way_ _._

"Susan!"

I turn my head to see who´s yelling my name and I barely recognize her face before she yells again: "THINK FAST!" Kay-Lee smashes a pillow in my face and I fall headfirst onto the bed.

"Oh, you are _so_ gonna regret that!" I find a pillow of my own and throw it at Kay-Lee, but she ducks under the flying pile of packed feathers and it hits Shailene instead. Kay-Lee doesn´t notice and points a finger at me, saying: "Ha ha, you missed!"

Unfortunately, her cockiness blinds her from the now pillow-holding Shailene. She presses it to her head before Kay-Lee has any idea what is happening, blinding her sight.

When Shailene eventually takes her pillow away from Kay-Lee´s face I´m towering over her with a smirk on my face. "Think fast," I say, letting the words sink, drama as my companion, before I hit her with my pillow and she topples over.

All three of us start to laugh even Kay-Lee who looks downward and says: "No fair! There´s two of you!"

"Well, that´s the beauty of teamwork," Shailene says as we high-five.

"Tell me ´bout it, sistah!" I smirk.

"Would you three shut it!" Daisy has her eyebrows high and her eyes are filled with insult.

I lean over the bed and let my head fall to the side. "What? Did we destroy your make-up-time?"

Daisy rolls her eyes and turns her sight towards the mirror again so she can focus on her make-up.

"I don´t really see why you´re putting on your make-up when we´re having a sleepover?" Kay-Lee says from behind my back. "I mean, it isn´t exactly what you do before you´re getting to bed."

Shailene pop up behind her and grins. "Who says we´re getting to bed?"

We keep having fun, laughing and throwing pillows at one another, even Daisy who simply scoffs the pillow away. It must have been hours until we finally settle down and lay at the floor. We removed Daisy´s bed and covered the floor with blankets. Fortunately, Daisy´s ceiling is made by pure glass, like a window. So we lie in a circle with our backs on the floor, looking through the window at the stars.

"It´s so cool that your ceiling is a window!" Kay-Lee says amazed.

"Try saying that when the sun blends your eyes in the morning," Daisy replies to my left.

"Why don´t you just cover it with the cover-thing?" Shailene point to a sort of a panel on the edge of the window meant to shield the sunlight.

"Because I don´t need to do that in the evening when I´m going to bed!" Daisy raises her voice as she talks. It´s rude and insulting, but Shailene doesn´t take it personally. She´s used to Daisy´s insulting comments, we all are.

Silence consumes us for a couple of minutes as we gaze towards the black sky until Kay-Lee breaks in: "Have you ever wondered how it would be seeing the earth from the moon?"

"That´d be beautiful!" Shailene says.

Daisy steals a look from Kay-Lee. "Are you thinking of becoming an astronaut?"

"What? You think I wouldn´t pull it off?"

"If there is anyone who is cocky enough to go and try anything like that, it is you," Daisy laughs.

"I wouldn´t look down at earth" I say without taking my sight off the sky. "I´m tired of earth. I´ve been living here my entire life. I want to go and see the stars."

The others exchange looks as if I´m the weirdest person in the world. But I don´t mind. My attention is with the sky filled with blinking diamonds that represents the light from millions of stars.

"Did you know that the universe is filled with more stars than there are grains of sand on the planet?"

"If that is true then I´d like to see the universes answer for a desert", Kay-Lee breaks in.

"I want to explore the universe and see all the wonders it has in store".

"Here we go again." Daisy rolls her eyes and falls down on her blanket with her pillow over her ears and eyes.

"What?" I exclaim.

"You do this like every day!" Shailene answers for Daisy. " _'I´d love to travel to Egypt and discover the secret and mysterious tombs in the pyramids. Oh! And go back in time and see_ the _William_ _Shakespeare_ _in the Globe Theatre!_ ' And the favorite of them all: _'I want to_ _go and travel through the stars!_ _'_ " She says like she adores it, but I know she´s only imitating me.

"What´s wrong with that? I say confused.

"You keep babbling about your absurd dreams, hon," Kay-Lee says with her head on the side. "You´re like a teenage version of Indiana Jones, only you never got to experience the adventures."

"People say it´s good to have dreams."

"No," Daisy continues. "People say it´s good to strive for dreams. You´ve got dream that are impossible to strive for. So what good are they?"

"Yeah, well, think what you want! I love my dreams and I´m gonna keep them till I fulfill them."

They start to laugh, never endlessly and really hard, but I don´t care. One day I will complete my dreams. I will fly away and I will never come back again.

My feet are dragging behind me when I walk on the path leading home. The sun is melting my skin and my backpack feels like it´s filled with barrels of gold.

Another day on school checked off my list that is named life. And it was exactly the same as yesterday, and the day before that, ... and the day before that, ... and every other day of my life. Sometimes I feel like I´m wasting my life. There is so much to see and I´m barely looking from a distance, like I know that it is out there, but I can´t reach it. One day I will though, I have to.

As I shut the door behind me when I finished my mile-long walk from school, a sound flows through the entire house, letting my mother know I´m alive.

"Susan dear, are you home?" she shouts from upstairs.

"Yes, mum!" I let her know it was I who smashed the door shut, but that´s all I do.

I let my mind wonder, and when I let my mind wonder I want to be alone. I do that often. My friends are right, I keep thinking of traveling and having adventures. It fascinates me.

I walk into my room, shutting the door behind me as if I am a blow of the wind. I throw my bag to the corner and fall helplessly down at my bed, pretending to die.

I lie there unmovable for ages until my mother steps through the door. Her shiny red hair falls down her shoulders. She has kind eyes blinking slowly. She wears blue jeans and a caramel-brown leatherjacket over a vine-red top.

My mother was never the "mother" type. She likes the same movies as I do, she listens to music like a normal teenager and act like she is a part of my weird group of friends. I never mind though, neither do my friends. They think she is cool and welcome her when she´s around. My mother´s name is Amelia Williams, but they have a tendency to call her Amy or Ames. She´s like our cool role model.

But I can tell from the look on her face that she is playing "mother of the year" right now.

"Susan, sweetheart."

"What, mum?" I say irritated while looking down at my fingers. It´s not like I think she is irritating, but the contrast between her teenager-like role model to "I´m your mother and I need to act like one" is so huge that I can´t help but look down on my mother-mother and look up to my teenager-mother.

She lays a hand on my lap and says: "You came back with a mathematic test yesterday, didn´t you?"

I furrow my brows as I slowly and uncertainly mumble: "Yes."

"And what result did you get?" mum asks with her eyes locked on mine.

"An A" I keep talking even though I have no idea where this conversation is going.

"And what did you get averagely last year?" mum continues.

"D" I say, knowing myself how I have approved drastically the last year in my grades, and not just mathematics, but a lot of subjects. "I got an A today at physics though."

My mother nods and smiles proudly, but I know that that is not why she came to talk like a "mother-mother".

"And how much did you prepare for your tests?" She keeps asking question and I feel like I´m being interrogating.

I never prepare for my tests, simply because it bores me and I am really bad when it comes to boredom. So I never prepare for the tests, which made my grades horrible and so I didn´t these times either.

"Not much. I knew the curriculum, I didn´t really need to practice."

"But how did you know the curriculum, sweetheart?" she asks slowly, hesitating between the words as if she have to push them out of her mouth. Clearly, she isn´t comfortable asking these questions for some reason. She carefully chose out her words before she asks and let the words sink in.

The worry-wrinkles keeps getting deeper the further she talks, but I still answer. "I don´t know. ´Cus we were taught it," I say, though it sounds more like a question.

"But honey, how come everyone else have to practice to their tests and you don´t have to?" mum asks.

That is the question that stops the slowly weird exchange of questions and answers. "Mum, what are you getting at?"

"Your dad and I are just wondering if you have noticed any changes in you that others haven´t?" Mum looks at me with comforting eyes, but comfortable is not how I feel. I feel something else, I feel angry.

"Ok, so maybe I´m a bit cleverer than everybody else, maybe I wasn´t last year, but is that so bad?"

"No, there is nothing wrong with that!" she says and I know that she only said it so she could avoid me being mad at her. It´s not what she thinks at all, and that makes me even angrier.

I sit up from my bed and stand in front of her. "Then what is the problem?"

"There´s no problem, we were just wondering." My mother shakes her head at me.

"Well, no, I´m fine", I say, finishing the conversation, waiting for mother to walk out the door.

She sighs, clearly gotten nowhere with her intentions, but she raises from her seat at my bed and walk slowly towards the exit. Then she stops in the doorframe and says: "Dinner´s ready in twenty minutes."

Amy Pond is waiting at her couch in her own home with her fingers drumming on the cellphone she had just used. The screen hasn´t blacked out yet and the number of her best friend is still showing on the little square. The Doctor´s number is the only way she can contact him, considering finding him is like searching for a needle in a haystack, only the needle is a Time Lord and the haystack is all of space and time in the cosmos, and who knows; maybe even further. So Amy keeps the number close and safe, in case she ever needed his help, or merely just to talk. And she really needed to talk to him. Because she was mad at him and she demanded answers.

Though despite her urge to slap him in the face and shout the question she had been wondering about more and more the past year, she couldn´t help but smile as the breezing wind and wheezing sound of that beautiful blue box landing in her yard. Besides, it´s been ages since she last saw her raggedy doctor.

I am spending my day in my room tonight. It is a weekend and all my friends are busy, except for Kay-Lee, but Kay-Lee dedicated her summer-day to couch-lying and TV-watching. That is typical her, and when she does that, it´s my duty as her friend to leave her to her own time. Even though that means I´m stuck in my house without anyone to spend time with.

I am keeping myself busy playing my guitar - not too loud, because I know my dad goes crazy with the sound -, when I hear a joyful cry coming from downstairs.

Quietly I make my way down the staircase and settle down at one of the lower levels. I can see through a little gap in the door to the living room where my mom is standing. She looks happy; her face lit up with a grin. She is obviously talking with someone but I can´t see who. Maybe it´s my dad, maybe he asked her out on a date for once. Mum would love that, they haven´t been on a date in ages.

But I quickly realize I´m wrong when I here my Dad say: "Long time, no see."

"Is it? I thought I were here to days ago to give you a one of the famous, hot snowballs of Tyraksja H-16, on Friday?" I try to see whom they're speaking to without being noticed, but it's a pointless exercise.

"Two days ago was Monday, and what is Tyraksja?" Mum places her hands on her hips.

"Ok, so not two days ago and not yet" The man says. "I guess I'll come visit soon with hot snowballs from Tyraksja H-16. It's really cool! It radiates heat, but it's made of snow! Well, that is what they say, but it's actually it is a chemical reaction between the double-missured elements Ghorium and ... " He starts to ramble uncontrollably and Mum has to stop him from going on forever.

"Yes, okay, that sounds brilliant. But I didn't call you here to talk about hot snow." Mum slows her words, making it clear that this is important and needs to taken seriously. "Doctor, is she your daughter?"

The man Mum called "Doctor" hesitates a bit before answering. "Who?"

"Oh, come on, Doctor!" Dad joins in. "You know that she is River's and River is your wife!"

He hesitates again. Maybe he's unsure; maybe he doesn't want to answer. I don't know.

It feels wrong to eavesdrop, especially when the subjects sounds so serious. I keep wondering whom this "she" is. Probably someone I don't know.

"Honestly, I don't know. River is a ... complicated woman. But I guess ... yes, probably yes".


	2. Meeting the Doctor

My breath is pacing and vision is blurry. I feel like Mum is already right behind my back, stuck up on my heels, yelling my name, trying to explain what´s going on, but I feel pretty confident to say that I don´t want to know. However she is not there.

I keep telling myself that it´s not what I think. That this is all some kind of huge mistake and I´m thinking it all wrong. Still, it isn´t an easy task to convince myself; still, I keep going with quick feet, not running, but absolutely wanting to make the distance between me and my parents as long as possible, as fast as I can, if "parents" is the word I am looking for.

I pick up my phone from my pocket and press on the screen with shaky fingers. My throat gets dryer by the second and I feel I can´t breath properly. Somehow this whole situation gets me feeling a bit sick.

When the beeping sound sings in my ear, I hold the phone up to my ear and wait for the other end to speak with her voice. When she does, I feel a tear rolling down my chin.

"Hello, this is queen of chilling and countess of laziness speaking", Kay-Lee says in the phone like it´s one of the most normal days of the year. It´s sounds so wrong.

"Kay-Lee, can I come over?" I ask, trying not to tremble too much, and it seems that I was successful considering she answer with irritation dominating her voice.

"I told you, Susan! I´m gonna be alone tonight! Geez, I thought you were the one who knew that the best. I seriously expected Daisy or Shailene to ask something like that, but not _you_."

"Just shut up, Kay-Lee! I just can´t hear this right now!" I snap and more tears starts to stream down my face, making light tracks in my makeup. A wall I thought I could keep solid broke down and I stop walking, bringing myself down to my knees. I´m not caring that I can´t hear Kay-Lee anymore, having drawn the phone from my ear, letting myself have a piece of solitude to stop the rivers from flowing down my cheeks. When I bring the phone up to my ear again, my voice is still trembling, but not enough to stop me from talking. "I´m sorry, Kay-Lee, I just, ..." I pause for a beat, too preoccupied sobbing. "Can I come over?"

"Of course you can!" Kay-Lee says clearly alerted and worrying, a transforming in her attitude I didn´t catch.

I don´t bother saying 'goodbye', it feels wrong, too normal for a day like this.

And so I keep walking on the wide road, originally meant for cars, but there isn´t a vehicle in sight.

Everything turns rather peaceful. My weeping is the only sound that can be heard and the whole thing starts to seem ridiculous. Here I am, crying over something I don´t understand, and around me the reality is still working as normal, despite my absurd day. No matter how many tears I shed, the birds will still sing. No matter how much I deny my thoughts, the wind will still blow, playing with my hair. No matter how bad I think my day is, the universe is still turning like it is supposed to, not caring what is happening to me. There are millions of problems bigger than mine. There are millions of bad days worse than my. And I keep walking down the road, with black mascara under my eyes, wet chin that has just starting to dry.

"I am so pathetic," I mumble to myself as my eyes points to my feet.

"That is exactly the same thing I tell my self every day."

I stop dead in my tracks. My head jerks up and my eyes grow wide.

On a white bench decorated with beautiful decorations near a park, only a few meters away, sits a man. He looks at me with a kind face and a smile on his lips. His dark, floppy hair lays perfectly balanced on his head, hiding a pair of big ears. He wears a light brown tweed-jacket with a blue shirt under it. And to top it all off, he has a dark red bow-tie wrapped around his neck. He leans comfortably against the back of the bench, his one arm resting on the edge of it.

He waits for me to answer, but I never do. In stead I start to catch up my speed again, on the edge to running, as I recognize him as the man talking to my mother in the living room. The same man who Mum claimed is my father.

I haven´t gotten far when his voice fills the air again, creating chills down my neck.

"Susan!" His voice isn´t harsh; isn´t furious; isn´t desperate; simply ... _kind_.

My stomach twirls and I stop. I don´t look back, I´m too scared to look him in the eye. My breathing is uneven and my whole body is shaking. I don´t know why I stopped, it just feels like the right thing to do.

"I´m not here to hurt you, Susan. I think you know that," he says behind my back, still sitting firmly on the bench.

He stops speaking for a short while, either giving me time to think or an opportunity to speak. But I´m not ready to speak, not yet.

"I know you´re scared." He says it with such sympathy, only I know he doesn´t really understand, even though he claims to. "And it´s ok. This is all strange and knew to you, and you are not sure how to comprehend with it all. But you should know that there is nothing to be afraid of. You are scared because you´re shocked. But if you give it time and if you give us the chance to talk about it, you will find this all very much easier to handle." He talks slowly, treading carefully.

I´m still looking into the distance, staring into a void not visible. I can feel the gaze of the man on my back. It´s a tingling feeling, one I have never encountered before. It never ends and so I know he never takes his sight off me, and that makes me nervous.

I consider walking away, run to Kay-Lee before he has a chance to stop me, but I don´t. Because the truth is that my breathing is shallower and my heartbeat slows down. There is still water in my eyes, but my skin on my face is now dry and sticky. His reassuring words are calming me down and I´m beginning to think that talking and receiving an explanation is more than a little wise.

It has been a long while since he last said something and I´m still arguing in my head about what to do. It takes all my courage to react when he says: "Susan, look at me."

I swallow in my throat, still unsure if he is worthy to be trusted, but I still do as he says.

He is still leaning against the bench. His eyes are filled with kindness and sympathy, but all that fades away quickly as his sight is locked properly on to my face. Marvel and astonishment replace it, turning his simple sight into a gaze. "Look at you," he says, his eyes gaping. "You´re so beautiful."

I quickly turn on my heel. It all becomes too much, having just received the fact that I have a father I´ve never known about, thrown in my face. And know he looks at me as if I´m the most precious thing he´s got, and he´s merely a stranger to me.

When he realizes that I´m walking away he jumps up from his seat. "No, wait! Susan!" he says, but I´m still walking. 

He takes a couple of steps towards me but then stops, wise enough to know not to go near me. "Susan, please stop."

I do stop, and this time I don´t hesitate to turn to look in his face. I´m not scared anymore, I´m angry.

"I´m sorry," he says. "You don´t know me and, believe me, I don´t know you. So, let´s do this the normal kind of way, yeah?" He hasn´t lost his self-confidence, but is clearly more desperate to keep me from leaving than he was willing to show a couple of minutes ago.

He moves his hand out, pointing it towards me. I´m not sure what he is doing, until he says: "Hello, I´m the Doctor. Nice to meet you."

I stop. I stop moving, my body stops shaking, it feels like my heart stops beating. I move my sight between his hand and his eyes, not sure what to do. He knows that and so he gives me plenty of time to think.

But after a moment of a troubled war of words inside my head I muster every bit of courage I´ve got and acknowledge his greeting by taking his and saying: "Susan Williams."

"So, ... " I say, not sure how to speak my words. "Who are you?"

We keep walking our way back home. I sent a message to Kay-Lee saying I´m not coming after all and she can keep up with her necessary chilling-time. Of course that doesn´t mean she stops worrying, on the contrary, she keeps calling me, but I doesn´t acknowledge the beeping noises from my phone. I ignore her because I want answers. Though I still know that I shouldn´t be needy, nor do I want to appear desperate in front of this stranger, especially when he sees me as the daughter he never met.

"I don´t mean like: 'Are you really my father?', but more like: 'What kind of person are you?'"

He takes a deep breath through his nose and looks at me, acting like he just met me, just like he promised he would. And that helps a lot. "Oh, I don´t know. There not much to compare me to, I am not the usual kind of guy."

"I can tell by the bow-tie and the tweed," I say, allowing a small smile in the corners of my mouth.

He laughs and straightens his bow-tie with a thump and an index finger. "Bow-ties are cool."

"I could tell that you know my parents ... Amy and Rory." I say it like there´s nothing wrong, but my eyes is locked onto the ground.

"Yes. They are very good friends of mine." His hides his hands in his trouser-pockets and looks at the road ahead of us. "I met Amy when she was very young. I only saw her for one night, though. And then I didn´t meet her before she turned twenty-one -, no wait, ... nineteen, on the day of Amy and Rory´s wedding night - well, no. She was twenty-one when she got married, but it was the same day as I met her when she was nineteen."

I wrinkle my eyebrows confused. "How does that work?"

But The Doctor only shrugs it off. "Complicated."

"So you knew my Mum when she was young.

He nods and smiles at me. "She was crazy back then. Little Amelia Pond at her wedding night." He smiles again, but this time, not at me. He looks into the air as if he is recalling a memory.

"But who are _you_?" I say. "I mean, what do you do for a living? Where do you come from? Why don´t I know who you are?" These were my questions, my spoken words, but we both know what the last question really meant: _Why didn´t I know that you are my father?_

He doesn´t say anything for awhile, struggling to find the words, but in the end he says: "I think it´s better if we get to your parents before we start this conversation."

The second I step inside the house my mother welcomes me with a big hug.

"But if you are my father, then who is my mother?" I ask, briefly looking at Amy.

The Doctor hesitates for a moment, exchanges glances with Amy and Rory, as if there's a story behind my true mother, and apparently there is.

The Doctor looks at me again, not sure how to express himself before he says: "I know you want to know who your mother is, but before I tell you I think you should here me out on this first."

I figured out a long time ago that there has to be a more complicated story behind this all, and I'm prepared to hear it. Still, I slightly narrow my eyes as I look at him and nod.

"Remember how I told you that one of the first times I met your mother, - well, not your mother, but Amy, - was at the night before her wedding?" The Doctor looks at Amy for a moment and she gives him a small smiles of nostalgia.

"Yes," I reply and nod my head again.

"Well, a short time later they got married, of course. And after that, they decided to spend their honeymoon traveling with me." The Doctor scratches his neck as if he's got an itch, but I doubt that is the case. "Now, while they were traveling with me, they did indeed ..." Nervously, he struggles to find the words. " ... _conceived_ a child; a daughter."

I look at Amy and Rory again, feeling confused. If this story is about Amy and Rory having a child, then why is it supposed to explain how I am not their child?

"And sadly," the Doctor continues. "that child was taken away, ... because of me."

"No," Amy immediately shakes her head. "it wasn't your fault."

However stubbornly, he repeats: "... because of me."

Amy refuses to give up and stares him in the eye. "It was _not_ your fault."

The Doctor sighs as he surrenders to Amy and watches as Rory places his hand on top of hers to calm her down. Then he turns his attention to me again.

"How was the child taken away?" I see the sorrow behind the eyes of them all, understanding that whatever happened, hurt them deep.

But the Doctor merely shakes his head and draws a long breath. "That is a story for another day."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There may have been some pieces missing in this text that I had planned to write later, but I don't really think they where necessary. If you didn't understand the concept somewhere in the text, then give me a shout and I'll fix it. I'm really happy with how the dialogues turned out in this text. Hope you enjoyed it. I'm not sure if I'll be writing anymore on it. Perhaps, we'll see. BYE!!

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, guys. Thanks for reading my story. I bet you know where the name Susan is coming from, but do you know where the title comes from? Arkytior? It actually comes from the same place. The Doctor's granddaughter: Susan. You see, her real, Gallifreyan name is Arkytior. I just thought that would be fun to know. BYE!


End file.
